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User blog:Martirsadota/A Rapid-Fire Tutorial on Layer Four Tracerouting (Windows-focused)
WARNING! This post is for educational purposes only! I neither promote/encourage nor condone practices of this sort. By utilizing the information in this guide, you understand that you are utilizing this information out of your own accord, and you agree that you will NOT hold me liable for any and all damages that may directly or indirectly arise from such usage! =Intro= If you have experienced a catbomb and asked for help over at the Connection page, you may have at one point been asked to perform a Layer Four Traceroute (LFT). It may have been followed by a scene wherein you're struck dumb by a hard slap of a geeky phrase right across your frontal lobes. Hopefully this guide can help avoid that scene. This guide is designed for Windows users; those on 'nix are smarter than I and know what the heck I'm talking about here. =First, a Little Background= Warning! Technical Stuff Ahead! (you can always skip.) A Layer Four Traceroute (hereafter referred to as an LFT) is a modification of the traceroute / tracert program used to discover the path your connection takes from your computer to the servers you're connecting to (in this case, the Kancolle servers). Traceroute? Yes, traceroute (tracert on Windows). Both traceroute and LFT work on similar principles. So, What's the Difference? Good, old traceroute / tracert, sadly, doesn't work on Kancolle. Here's the rub: traceroute and LFT use different methods, and the Kancolle servers reject traceroute's methodsVery technical note: traceroute/tracert uses ICMP, which works on a low level and is rejected by the Kancolle servers. LFT, on the other hand, uses TCP, which works on a higher level and is the same method your browser uses to connect to the servers when playing, and hence is accepted by the servers.. To illustrate, here's output of a tracert to a Kancolle server: Tracing route to 125.6.189.71 over a maximum of 15 hops 1 <1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.254.254 2 75 ms 58 ms 77 ms 10.188.44.219 3 41 ms 26 ms 63 ms 10.188.45.170 4 25 ms 34 ms 39 ms 112.198.191.61 5 73 ms 84 ms 77 ms 120.28.4.210 6 195 ms 127 ms 128 ms 2519.tyo.equinix.com 203.190.230.19 7 105 ms 84 ms * ae0.transit2.nihonbashi.vectant.ne.jp 28.118 8 117 ms 74 ms 75 ms 163-139-226-114.rv.vectant.ne.jp 4 9 77 ms 75 ms 75 ms 203.174.66.158 10 * * * Request timed out. 11 * * * Request timed out. 12 * * * Request timed out. 13 * * * Request timed out. 14 * * * Request timed out. 15 * * * Request timed out. Trace complete. And compare that with an LFT trace (done with tracetcp on Windows): Tracing route to 125.6.189.71 on port 80 Over a maximum of 15 hops. 1 2 ms 9 ms 1 ms 192.168.254.254 2 25 ms 26 ms 67 ms 10.188.44.219 3 * * 67 ms 10.188.45.170 4 * * * Request timed out. 5 76 ms 75 ms 80 ms 120.28.10.182 6 80 ms 128 ms 118 ms 203.190.230.19 2519.tyo.equinix.com 7 110 ms 99 ms 88 ms 163.139.128.118 ae0.transit2.nihonbashi.vectant.ne.jp 8 134 ms 81 ms 135 ms 163.139.226.114 163-139-226-114.rv.vectant.ne.jp 9 * 74 ms 109 ms 203.174.66.158 10 Destination Reached in 71 ms. Connection established to 125.6.189.71 Trace Complete. You can't tell if you've reached the Kancolle server using tracert; line 10 could've been a broken router between you and the Kancolle server, or it could've been the Kancolle server, but tracert won't know because the server blocks the program's probings. Contrast that with the LFT trace, where you'll instantly know you're connected to the server (except the broken node in #4, which is "interesting"). Now you're convinced that you need LFT for helping you solve your catbomb woes. How are you going to use it? Before that, how are you going to get it? (Windows doesn't come with LFT by default.) =The Solution: tracetcp= tracetcp is a neat little tool that does just that: an LFT. Now, whenever you're asked to perform an LFT, you can just fire it up and submit the output to whoever asked you to perform it. "So how do I fire it up?" you ask. Good question. =Using tracetcp= tracetcp requires a bit of setup. It also requires that you're logged in to the computer as an Administrator. #1: Install Pre-requisite(s) For tracetcp to work you'll need WinPcap, which is what tracetcp uses to do its magic. If you've been following my tutorial on asset grabbing, Wireshark already installed WinPcap for you. If you haven't, get the installer here, install and proceed. #2: Get tracetcp Grab the latest version from their GitHub. Download the zip, extract it to a folder in a convenient place, and you're done. That's all there is for setup. #3: Fire It Up! Go to the folder where you extracted tracetcp. Right-click an empty area of the folder's window while holding down the Shift key. If you did it right, you should see an Open command window here option. Click that. ??? Aaaaaaand what's this? It's geek haven, the command line. It's time for the moment of truth. Type this in: tracetcp Kancolle server's IP address (You can look up your server's IP address here.) and hit Enter. Whew! If everything's set up correctly you should see output like the one below: Tracing route to 125.6.189.71 on port 80 Over a maximum of 15 hops. 1 2 ms 9 ms 1 ms 192.168.254.254 2 25 ms 26 ms 67 ms 10.188.44.219 3 * * 67 ms 10.188.45.170 4 * * * Request timed out. 5 76 ms 75 ms 80 ms 120.28.10.182 6 80 ms 128 ms 118 ms 203.190.230.19 2519.tyo.equinix.com 7 110 ms 99 ms 88 ms 163.139.128.118 ae0.transit2.nihonbashi.vectant.ne.jp 8 134 ms 81 ms 135 ms 163.139.226.114 163-139-226-114.rv.vectant.ne.jp 9 * 74 ms 109 ms 203.174.66.158 10 Destination Reached in 71 ms. Connection established to 125.6.189.71 Trace Complete. which you can now copypasta (hint: Right-click > Mark) to whoever you need (or want) to send the output to. =Footnotes and References= Category:Blog posts